Local Bank Parking Lots

While it has always been common for people to drop of their un paid vehicles in local bank parking lots where the loans were originated. They think that because they did the loan at that particular branch that is where the car should be dropped off. Strange thing is that sometimes those cars will sit in bank parking lots for weeks at a time. Why is that? Isn’t the bank expecting the car? Several things happen in this scenario beginning with sometimes the owner will call the local branch or advise the collectors calling him that he is dropping it off at the bank.

However more times then not, when someone is behind on car payments, house payments, credit card payments they will change their phone number and typically not be in any contact at all. Not to be rude but to avoid the constant harassment that goes on when someone is behind. If any of you were ever behind on anything you know nothing is more obnoxious then some idiot collector on the other end of the phone trying to pry money that you simply don’t have. Problem solved by instantly by changing phone plans and numbers.

Now there is no contact but the people are still good people wanting to do the right thing and turn in the car as they know they can no longer handle the contract obligations. They take the car and drop it at the branch and for weeks it sits there. Many repo men never even think to check the local bank parking lot so it sits and sits. The local bank employees have no care in the world and do not even know how the repossession process works and probably do not even know there is a huge repossession area of the bank at corporate headquarters. So they never mention that some strange car with no plates is sitting in the same spot for weeks. Even if they do, the bank manager might not care or know who to call. In the meantime the repo department is going crazy looking for the car at previous residences, making contact with the debtor at his or her work but the debtor avoids them.

The whole reason for them dropping the car at the bank was to A. be a good correct person and B. more importantly avoid embarrassment with repo people showing up at the work and house. At this point it backfires and the embarrassment gets worse. The bank has no idea that the car is sitting inside the local bank parking lot, they pay a skip company at this point to find the car.

The skip company makes phone contact with the new phone number and is quickly told the car is at the bank for pick up. If its not the skip company, it is usually another hungry repoman cruising the area and notices this car sitting in the parking lot even if it still has plates you have to ask yourself why, why would a car be sitting all by itself at the bank late night. Further seeing there is no cleaning crew inside the bank. Common sense says it is a voluntary surrender.

The one mistake the debtor did was to not call the repo department with the information in order to avoid all of the issues.

Steven Cohen who has written over 400 articles for the repossession, investigation and finance RepossessionHQ.com
Steven Cohen is the founder of Repossession HQ and it's affiliated sites with HQ Group which offers complicated skip trace and fraud consulting in the upscale financial industry. Another HQ group site can be found InvestigationTrainingHQ here and If you've enjoyed this post be sure to follow me on Google+

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